One Art
by Mauve Alert
Summary: Dying takes concentration. A companion and regeneration.


A/N - Another fic in my ongoing series (which I am considering naming _The Study of Life_. Thoughts on that?). I was working on the next full-length installment when it occured to me to write this: Anna and the deaths of both the Doctor and her lover.

This scene takes place during the first fic in my series, _Denaturing_.

Other stories in the series are listed in my profile.**  
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**One Art**

_--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture  
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident  
the art of losing's not too hard to master  
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster._  
-_One Art,_ Elizabeth Bishop

They fall together, her friend and her lover, both neatly gutted by a wickedly clawed, towering monster, their blood everywhere and bright, bright red. Somebody screams.

The Doctor can cheat death, by changing his body. He told her so, once. "If I die," he said, "don't panic. Just bring me back to the TARDIS, quick as you can."

Anna remembers his words. She doesn't panic. She looks at them, the Doctor and Jason, the Time Lord and the human, her - friend? teacher? captain? - and her lover. Their faces are pale, shocked, their breathing labored, their bodies torn. She looks, and she doesn't panic, and she chooses.

There is no feeling involved, no thought. She is simply acting, reacting. She is doing what she can, and there is nothing that she can do for Jason. The Doctor, though, may be born again (what did he call it? she can't remember), and she acts accordingly.

She pulls the Doctor up by an arm and runs. He is nearly dead, his legs clumsy and weak, and she half-drags him as they stumble towards the TARDIS, leaving Jason behind. There is no time to feel guilty about this, or even realize that she will. Guilt is for later.

Somebody is screaming. She thinks it might be her.

In the TARDIS they collapse to the grill floor, his body heavy on top of hers, and for a moment she is fifteen again, pinned down by her father's body as he dies for her. History repeats, variations on a theme.

_Daddy_, Anna thinks, then _Doctor_, and then she gets up, gently shifting the Doctor's body. Like him, his clothes are shredded, covered in blood and torn skin and bits of him that ought to be tucked away neatly inside his body. He reeks of blood and death and shit.

"That. . . screaming. . ." the Doctor grits out, his face tight with pain, ". . . is terri-terribly distracting. Dying. . . takes concentration. . . you know."

"Oh, oh, oh-"

"'S not. . . that bad." And somehow he manages to grin at her, that same mad grin that she's known since she was fifteen years old. "You did. . . good, Anna Banana."

And he dies, the bastard, with a grin on his face.

She tunes out the screaming, because dying takes concentration.

A golden glow scalds her senses as it envelops him, burning him to ashes and giving birth to something new. It takes away the Doctor and leaves her with something new, something other, a body that doesn't fit in the remnants of his old clothes. When the light fades, it leaves phosphorescent spots dancing across her vision.

"Anna," says the new man. "What do I look like?"

She stares at him, not quite believing, not quite seeing. "Your hair's sorta. . . orange-y brownish," she says, because there's nothing to do but answer, and finds a mirror to show him his reflection.

"I'm ginger!" he exclaims, thrilled, and promptly passes out.

The Emergency Program tells her to take him to the Zero Room, unless it hasn't been rebuilt yet, and to make him a cup of tea. The recording is him, the just-dead him, the him she's known since she was fifteen years old. She watches it three times.

Then she gets him to a room with a bed - there is no Zero Room that she can find - and strips off everything but his trousers. His big brown coat is a mess, ruined, never to be worn again. She steals some things from his pockets: a few tarnished pennies, a red rubber ball, a silver spoon, a piece of blue stone.

Then she takes a bath. She sits in the tub for three hours, watching her skin wrinkle, imagining her withered toes falling away like so many autumn leaves or faded flower petals. Maybe, she thinks, she's making herself a raisin: preserved.

She gets dressed, throws away her blood-and-gut smeared clothes, and collapses into her old bed - the one that she and Jason never shared.

After ten hours she wakes up, and goes off to figure out how to brew tea.

- FIN -

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